Trump White House Says It Won’t Release Visitor Logs

Citing national security and privacy concerns, the Trump White House issues a reversal of an Obama policy.

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By Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

So much for the swamp Donald Trump promised to drain in Washington. In a significant departure from former president Barack Obama’s policy, the Trump administration announced Friday that it will not voluntarily disclose the names of people who visit the White House. The administration cited “grave national-security risks and privacy concerns” for not releasing the logs, which are maintained by the U.S. Secret Service and are also known as the Workers and Visitors Entry System, as well as a federal court ruling that determined that most visitor logs aren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The new policy will allow the Trump administration to decide whether to release the identities of visitors who come to the White House to see the president, the vice president, and their senior staff. Visitor logs will now be treated like other presidential records, and will remain secret until five years after Trump leaves office (during his presidency, Obama voluntarily disclosed more than 6 million records, although critics note the previous administration also used its discretion to keep some visits off the books).

The announcement comes days after a group of watchdog organizations sued the Trump administration in New York federal court in an attempt to compel the White House to release its visitor logs, which Obama opened up in 2009 after facing a similar court challenge from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of the three organizations involved in Monday’s suit. The Obama administration ultimately agreed to release visitor logs to the White House every three to four months, publishing them on a Web site maintained by the White House. But since Trump’s inauguration, nobody has updated the publicly available Web page dedicated to the list.

Per usual, President Trump’s archive of more than 34,000 tweets contains several instances in which he berated Obama for doing the exact same thing Trump and his administration are doing now. “Why is @BarackObama spending millions to try and hide his records?” a 2012 tweet reads. “He is the least transparent President—ever—and he ran on transparency.” Months later, he tweeted again: “It is really a shame that Barack Obama may stop $5M from being generously donated to charity all because he refuses to be transparent.” And finally: “A lot of undecided and independent voters have had enough with Obama’s lack of transparency. I don't blame them.”